4.15.28 Roleplaying an Executor

The Executors are an ancient assassin cadre that once served Severn personally. As such, the profession's past is a sordid one, their vicious fighting style historically turned toward the obliteration of the Ankyreans after the Manipulator had deemed them no longer necessary. Trained as expert trackers and taught practical forms of shadow charms, they operate with fluid grace and brutal agility in pursuit of whatever quarry that catches their eye.

How are the powers of the class accessed?
Shadowdancing is a martial style that hinges upon focus, physicality, and the subtle manipulation of one's own shadow to supernatural ends. Employing annular weapons known as ringblades, users of this combat school shift and turn as if they were the shadow of a candlelit flame, tearing through their foes with ethereal poise and single-minded determination. Each movement and each fell strike ensure that the user's shadow properly positions itself to lash out and aid the Executor in battle, usually through manners of trickery, distraction, or vexation. Consummate masters of the art often display the ability to entirely separate from their shadow for a brief time, effectively doubling their own killing prowess in legendary displays of bellicosity.

In an effort to support their offensive arts, Executors of old followed in the footsteps of their Immortal master and delved the secrets of Artifice - a field of deceptive charms, mind-over-body resilience techniques, and other shadow magic. The defining technique of a practitioner of Artifice is the ability to render accomplices through ambient shadow and mental imagery, allowing them to fabricate terrifying beings rooted in the deepest, most psychological fears of mortal minds. An Executor is often accompanied by a coterie of these creatures, ensuring they are never alone in battle. Unstable and vicious, these beings are never considered friends or allies and even those that command them look upon them with a suspicion that necessitates the knowledge of banishment and binding charms to keep them under control.

Finally, Executors practice the art of Subversion. Steeped in strategy and philosophy related to clever ambushes, this school of thought expounds upon the importance of bleeding an enemy into weakness before engaging them. A varied selection of archery techniques, tracking know-how, mechanical traps, and alchemical toxin production fills out the entirety of this diverse practice, ensuring that an individual agent is never at a loss for options. 

Visual style of the class:
Owing in part to their function in society of ancient and modern ages, an Executor is often clad in clothing that best suits clandestine operations. This typically means no hanging or loose folds of fabric, nothing that could snag or tear during infiltration, and sturdy boots or other footwear that serve best for a long journey. Jewelry or trinkets that make someone highly identifiable were considered outright forbidden in the elder days. However, the evolutions of enchantment and adventurer protocol necessitate being more lax with this standard in the current era, meaning that Executors of the current age might sport rings or amulets invested with magic but very little cosmetic embellishment as a compromise. They favour dark materials that blend into the shadows they are known to manipulate, including the metal of their annular, exotic weaponry.

In combat, an Executor moves with chilling grace and terrifying efficiency. Every movement serves a purpose, for each movement manipulates the shadow that serves as their silent companion in all attempts upon their foe's life. Flourishes, dizzying heel turns, clever feints, and tricksome slashes conspire into the ancient shadowdance, allowing them to tear an opponent into bloody tatters with swift, successive strikes. As if possessed of a mind of its own, the fighter's shadow often shifts and moves of its own accord, creating distractions and confusion that allow yet more dangerous assaults.

Never operating alone, each agent is accompanied by constructs birthed from mortality's most primal fears, all of whom lurk within their master's shadows as a fierce coterie capable of breaking the body, mind, and spirit of whosoever the Executor stands against. These creatures emanate the inky darkness of ambient shadow's manifestation, lending them the appearance of psychologically horrifying art that has escaped from its canvas.

Executors are lithe and graceful, with a small degree of muscle evident due to the physically strenuous activity that comes with their trade. Though they lack the intense physical regiment of other battlefield-dwellers, their repetitious review of Shadowdancing forms often ensures they stay in excellent physical shape.

Side effects of use:
Due to their continual association with primal embodiments of terror, an Executor might display behaviour others would display as 'unnerving' or 'on edge'. Haunted by the constant presence of these beings due to the needs of their profession, they might grow desensitised to normally terrifying displays or topics. They are utterly at home in darkness and might recognise shapes or patterns where there is naught but the void of absolute darkness. Continual usage of Artifice's arts might also affect a user's memory or cause them to question their own reality at times, especially if they are adepts or novices just coming into their power.

Subversion's constant application of traps and ambush tactics often means that Executors display single-minded, mechanical thinking that aids in formulating battle strategies. In spite of this, the field does come with some downsides - early students might find they burn or scar their hands when working with freshly concocted toxins, or else injure their fingers when catching them in the components of their traps.

The constant need for stealth and subtlety often ensures that Executors develop into very closed-off, private individuals who divulge very little of their own feelings, thoughts, or plans. This can make them slightly standoffish in social situations. 

Roleplaying the class:
Executors are, for the most part, soldiers meant to further the cause of the Theocracy. They are warriors of darkness and shadow and were well-equipped in ancient days to tackle the threat of renegade Ankyreans. This translates to the current era, where they are especially capable of hunting down sorcerers and ending their lives in a blink and a breath. They are indiscriminate in their haunting violence and reject self-limitations such as chivalry or honour in favour of fulfilling their duty no matter what lengths they must go to. Driven by service and purpose, they often exhibit little care for much else so long as they have a task set before them.

Some Executors choose to adhere to their ancient heritage and put themselves in the employ of a god or goddess as a forgotten echo of a time when the Manipulator dictated their every move. To be an Executor is to face any danger and dispense with all threats and obstacles - even those that could utterly unmake them.

Guidelines for customisation:
When customising any Artifice accomplice, please keep in mind that these creatures are primal embodiments of terrors and phobias. Essentially demons, they possess a great deal of ambient shadow within them that eats away at their free will and renders them unwilling, barely controlled thralls for the Executor who summoned them. They are not meant to be cute, as this would directly detract from their power due to a lower recognition of the fears they represent. They are not viewed as companions or friends even by their users and thus they will never possess special trinkets, clothing, or other things one might dress actual pets with. They must always adhere to the aesthetic of art, with a suggestion of leaning towards chiaroscuro appearances. All of them should appear as if they are made of ink in proposed customisations, representing the root of the manner in which Executors summon them.